Friday, January 18, 2013

You will Not Stop a Fire by Banning It
   You will never stop a fire by banning it. And, to some extent, so it is with guns.
   If it is a love of guns we have, if we as Americans see a need to own guns in order to fight off burglars, and to fight off government tyranny, and to be prepared for a foreign invasion, then those are the things feeding the fire.
   Those are attitudes, and you cannot ban them. You cannot legislate them. If you would change them, you must appeal to people's senses. Sometimes, the best thing for government to do is to provide leadership, not legislation nor executive order.
   Remember when President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage? He didn't pass an executive order and he didn't propose legislation. Instead, he made an appeal for what he felt was right. His mere verbal argument did much to persuade the nation that gay marriages are okay.
   The attitude of the nation was altered. We can be for or against gay marriages, but it will be hard to argue Obama's verbal appeal did not sway national opinion to favor same-sex matrimony.
   Leadership, not legislation.
   Americans need to be persuaded that just because the Second Amendment gives them the right to own guns, it does not mean they have to. Actually, you can be a patriot without owning a gun.
   They need to be convinced that if you don't need a gun, it might be better that you don't have one. They need to reflect on the thought that with only 5 percent of the world's population, we own 50 percent of the world's guns (if statistics are correct), and they need to wonder if that has anything to do with the U.S. having  20 times the gun-related murder rate of the average developed nation (again, if statistics are correct).
   That's 20 times what the other countries have.
   They need to wonder about how 600,000 guns are stolen annually (if statistics are correct), and they need to consider that a good portion of our violent crimes are committed with stolen weapons.
   They need to reflect on that study showing that, when compared to 22 other high-income nations, gun-related suicides in the the U.S. were 5.8 times higher than in the other nations (despite U.S. suicides being 30 percent less, overall). If you don't like the idea of your children committing suicide, should you keep a gun in the home?
   They need to look at that same study and take note that unintentional firearm deaths were 5.2 times what they were in the other nations.
   They need to understand that a gun is an influence, that once placed in a home, those living in the home will be looking for ways to use it. They need to consider that anger often grabs for an available release, and if the gun is ready and handy, the release of anger might be channeled through the gun.


  
   


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